Google Search has “plan your visit”/ time spent on locations feature

For those who travel a lot, you’ve probably had this experience at one time or another. You have your whole itinerary planned out because you’re only spending a limited time in a specific location. But when you get there, you realize that you should have added extra time because there are a lot (and we mean a lot) of people spending an inordinate amount of time, taking pictures and just soaking in the place. A new feature on Google Search can forewarn you so you can plan your trip better.

When you search for a location using your Google Search App, aside from the usual card with the photo, location, operation hours, description, and reviews, you will also now see a section called “plan your visit”. For now, the only information you’ll see there is how long people usually spend in that place. But it will probably not show up in all the places that you search, only those that are popular tourist and historical locations. That’s because the high foot traffic can mean that Google has a lot of data to aggregate.

So how can this be useful for travelers? You’ll now have an idea of how much time you’ll probably need to spend in that place and you will also probably get a feel of how many people go there, if you do further research for the latter. We hope they will be adding more features in that “plan your visit” section as the average number of hours a person spends in a place is not enough information to properly plan that trip.

The update is rolling out for Google Search app users, so if you don’t have it yet on your Android device, just wait for it for a little while.